Balaji Sampath is scheduled to speak on campus today to discuss his highly regarded models for improving the quality of teaching in primary schools in India.
Sampath is a founding member of the Association for India’s Development (AID), a nonprofit grassroots organization that provides programs designed to improve health care, education and the status of women in India.
Sampath’s chapter in Chennai, India directs projects to provide students with learning tools. The association encourages local communities and state governments to improve government schools in more than 100 villages in rural South India.
Sampath and the AID Chennai team won the grassroots development portion of the MIT Global Indus Technovators Awards in 2005.
Gaurav Shah, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and an organizer of the event, said Sampath plans to inform students, faculty and community members about the efforts of AID volunteers in India, and about the ways UCLA students can become involved in educational projects.
Sampath plans to lead the discussion in an informal manner by beginning with an overview of the various educational projects and then opening the floor to questions, said Amarjeet Singh, one of the coordinators for the event.
Sridhar Venuri, a 2004 alumnus and member of the UCLA chapter of AID, said many primary school students in South India lack the basic reading and writing skills they need to succeed in school and later find employment.
“For basic employment, the first thing you need to do is being able to read and write,” Venuri said.
The UCLA chapter of AID targets the lack of resources and funding that impede development projects in India.
Organizers said the event will give students the opportunity to speak to someone with firsthand experience working at the grassroots level in the association’s development programs.
“The idea is to get a firsthand perspective, to see how students can contribute, what kinds of projects are there,” Singh said.
For Venuri, Sampath is inspiring because he chose to work as a full-time AID worker in India directly after graduate school.
“Right after he finished graduate school at the University of Maryland, he started a grassroots organization,” Venuri said.
Sampath’s visit to UCLA is part of a U.S. tour, with stops at a number of college campuses including UC Santa Barbara, Shah said.
Shah said Sampath has been reaching out to students and was instrumental in establishing chapters of AID on college campuses across the U.S.
Venuri said he believes Sampath is an inspirational figure for creating working models for change in India’s school system.
“He’s an innovator, he develops models for better education facilities and new methods of teaching,” Venuri said.
Sampath’s program trains teachers to make concepts more accessible to students, such as teaching math problems in a real-life scenario, and has already been implemented in South Indian government schools. His ideas for improving primary education are being accepted all over the country, Venuri said.
Schools also face challenges outside the classroom, most notably the poverty in rural India.
“A lot of people are poor; they don’t even have money for two meals a day,” Singh said.
Venuri said one of the challenges that schools in underdeveloped rural areas of South India face is that many children from low-income families are forced to work as child laborers.
“They are constrained by external things, and in school it’s challenging to keep up motivation,” Venuri said.
One of the association’s programs in India includes running village libraries to promote literacy and inspire students to read.
Venuri praised Sampath’s teaching strategies, in particular the learning-by-doing model of using visual aid and tool kits, for their ability to stimulate creativity and engage young students in math and science classes.
“Animation appeals a lot to children,” Venuri said.
According to Shah, the learning-by- doing model is currently in use in 400 primary and elementary schools run by the state government in Tamil Nadu.
Organizers say they hope the lecture will inform students and the community about the state of health care and primary education in India, while encouraging students to get involved in the global community.
Shah said the goal of the UCLA chapter of AID is to raise funds through events that combine education and cultural knowledge for students and community members, such as on-campus concerts by renowned artists and musicians from India.